Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous benefit adolescents who attend

While Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) has existed for more than 70 years, and is the most commonly sought source of help for alcohol-related problems in the United States, there is little “hard scientific evidence” showing that AA and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) can improve substance-use outcomes. This study examined how helpful AA and NA may be for adolescents, finding long-term benefits even though many youth discontinue attendance after time.

Results will be published in the August issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at OnlineEarly.

“It is difficult to evaluate the efficacy of mutual-help organizations like AA through randomized controlled experiments because the AA ‘intervention,’ being a community organization based on anonymity, cannot be directly under the control of the researcher in the usual way,” explained John F. Kelly, associate director of the MGH-Harvard Center for Addiction Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, and assistant professor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Yet their popularity and cost-effectiveness cannot be denied, added Kelly, also the study’s corresponding author.

“AA and NA are explicitly focused on abstinence and addiction recovery, they are widely available across most communities, they provide entry to a social network of recovery-specific support and sober events that can be accessed ‘on demand’ – particularly at times of high-relapse risk such as evenings and weekends, the services are free, and AA/NA can be attended as intensively, and for as long, as individuals desire,” he said.

However, he added, despite growing evidence that adults benefit from AA and NA, little is known about how these abstinence-focused organizations help youth, and what is known lacks scientific rigor.

“This knowledge gap is particularly noteworthy given that adolescents and young adults face more barriers to AA and NA than older adults and yet appear to be referred there just as frequently by treatment providers,” said Kelly. “Youth tend to have less severe addiction problems, on average, and consequently do not feel a strong need to stop using alcohol and/or drugs. ‘Why should they bother to go to abstinence-oriented organizations like AA and NA, and would they benefit even if they did go?’” These are the questions Kelly and his colleagues wanted to address.

The researchers recruited 160 adolescent inpatients (96 males, 64 females), with an average age of 16 years, who were enrolled at two treatment centers in California having a focus on abstinence and based on a 12-step model. The study participants’ length of stay ranged from four to six weeks, after which they were re-assessed on a number of clinical variables at six months, and one, two, four, six, and eight years.